


The Hunger Games Soliloquy

by Lizzy_Raven



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alternative Perspective, Anger, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Letters, Soliloquy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-26
Updated: 2013-03-30
Packaged: 2018-03-11 05:25:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3315803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lizzy_Raven/pseuds/Lizzy_Raven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A speech to the people of the Capitol, from the perspective of a district rebel, explaining the reasoning and justification behind the rebellion. Also, a letter to the rebels, from a Capitol citizen. Others may be added later.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Finnick Odair

To whoever it may concern;

Hello. I'm not sure if you bother to know who we are, or what we stand for, so I will inform you. We are the unseen force behind all that is created in your plastic world. We work hard for food, and slave for trinkets. Our world is gray and colorless if compared to your own. But yet we are still here, even if you try to ignore is for the majority of the year. We are everyone from the smallest child to the oldest ancient. We are your district celebrities. We are the nameless faces forgotten in death. We are the rebellion of Panem.

In your eyes, we are not worthy. Our rebellion is foolish to you. You take for granted that our efforts will be squashed. To you, we are children- not fit to make our own choices. According to you, we are no more than animals, and no better than slaves. Our lives mean nothing to you, except as to how we affect your own.

You say that we are foolish, that we are weak, that we will never win. And maybe that is true. Maybe we'll all die, and Panem will unite again. But when history looks back on us, no one can ever say that we did not try. My life should be my own to rule, and I will go where-ever my heart shall lead me. You can take away my life, but never my spirit. My words are mine alone, and my thoughts will be my own until I die.

To the government of Panem, I renounce thee. You haven't done anything for us, and yet we are your workers, your slaves, and your victims. I fight with all my heart, knowing that I will be helping bring your corrupt system down. It may not happen right away. Maybe not even soon. But when you crumble, I will be waiting and watching, and I will smile at your misfortunes.

You and your ideals to pacify your sheep-like people is the old Roman saying "Bread and Circuses" or, in the original, "Panem et Circenses". You lead the people close to you with luxuries, and keep them ignorant of real government workings. It works well, does it not? But add into the equation us, the workers, who you keep in poverty and fear. But oppression cannot live forever. Have you ever heard the old expression, 'history will repeat itself'? Mankind is doomed to make the same mistake that his ancestors made. The cycle will continue until someone learns from history's mistakes. An you, Panem, have not learned.

I rebel against you and your people because of the misery you put us through during the last decades. The horrors the children in our midst had to experience, and the helplessness of the people back home. Once they controlled us, but no longer. What kept us down is now the reason for rebellion- ironic, how karma works.

So for those who accuse us of being foolish, for rebelling against you for long-past reasons, I can assure you- I am not. I rebel because of the Hunger Games. It is one thing to punish the original offenders. While I don't condone it, I understand it. But to kill the children of our land, decades after the first rebellion? How can that be justified?

Now, I don't speak for others- they rebel for rights and freedoms, and because of the extreme poverty in their homes. They see the vastly unjust distribution of wealth, and rebel against that. And I agree, that is a perfectly valid reason for leaving Panem. But it is not my reason. My reason is the Hunger Games- the slaughter of our children, put on television like a sport. I see the pain and misery of our people and I have an obligation to my home to stop it.

And now, men and women in the Capitol, I speak to you directly. I have never understood this, and I really must ask: how can you justify your enjoyment of the Hunger Games? How can you broadcast our torment, and regard it as amusement?

How is it that you can enjoy this genocide? Have you been so desensitized to violence and death that our senseless pain means so little to you? You've become so sadistic that you look forward to the carnage. Are you so removed from the rest of the world that you can no longer feel empathy at all? How can you be so cold to our suffering? We are not a reality to you. You see death and laugh, but how happy would you be at the murder of your neighbor, your friend, your child? It's alright if it happens, as long as it doesn't happen to you?

Or maybe you actually believe you are better than us? Other than where we were born, there is no difference between us and you. I am just as intelligent, just as complex, just as human as you are. I bleed, and my blood is just as red as yours is. Do you believe that we are less than you, less than human, no more than animals? Have we lost our fundamental right to life in your eyes? What monsters you must see us to be if you believe we deserve to be tortured, to be murdered!

What the Hunger Games does, it points to the young, pure, innocent, sweet children, and it says, 'I'm going to punish you for the sins of your ancestors. I'm going to destroy all that which is good within you, and I'm going to tell you it's your own fault. I will laugh at your pain, and smile when you bleed. I will force you to fight others just like you: children. I will make it so awful for you that survival is worse than death. I will turn you into a monster, and I will enjoy doing it.' And you, my friends in the Capitol, are only feeding the fire.

Sincerely,  
Finnick Odair


	2. Effie Trinket

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And, presenting the other side of the argument...

Dear people of the rebellion,

You have to know, it didn't start out this way. They can't turn someone into a monster right away. You start out normal, someone you recognize, someone you know. And then it's one little thing at a time, tiny battles, things that don't seem to make any difference, until you realize that you don't know who you are anymore. Or worse, you never realize. You keep going on with your life, still thinking that you're the same, but you've changed. You've changed so much. And then it's too late.

I'd like to say that I was a pretty normal kid growing up, but it's all relative. I was born into an upper-middle-capitol-class family. I was never in want of anything my vain heart desired, and my parents kissed me goodnight, every night. At that point in my life, I had barely heard of the districts. We didn't know what they were like, or the people within them. They were never real to us children- just a strange land off in the distance.

Of course we saw them on television, everyone did. The Hunger Games were a yearly event. As a child, I watched with naive awe as the small, dirty district people were turned into magnificent creatures of delight. Like my fellows, every year since I was born, I would watch as the district people would fight to earn their freedom. To our childish minds, it was like a fairy tale. The hero would fight others to win the prize, to live like us Capitol people. It was a beautiful game to us, and one of glorious fun.

We knew that people died in the Hunger Games every year, but death is not palpable to a child. To us, things that were good were those which our parents approved of. If the government supported the Hunger Games, how could they be wrong? In addition, the tributes were never real people to us. The only ones the mattered in our lives were the victors. Their victory was celebrated monstrously. And those who won were given lives like ours, and the chance to come back to our beautiful Capitol every year.

I may not have been the most intelligent child, but even I realized that the people who were part of the government were the happy, rich, successful people. And the government didn't like people who asked too many questions. I decided, as a child, that I wanted to be an important person in the Capitol. I loved the Hunger Games, and I wanted to be a part of them. And to do that, I wouldn't ask too many questions. Ignorant, I decided, was a much easier way to live my life.

As teenagers, our rebellious nature was catered to by the other extreme. Our need to hate was satisfied by giving us an easy target. We were taught that about the first rebellion, how they had killed us, and our children, how they needed to be punished. We became blood thirsty. Our need to question and rebel was turned outwards, towards the enemies of the Capitol, the ones who had tried to destroy our utopia. Our extreme self-centeredness that all teenagers have kept us from sympathizing with the districts, the 'enemy'.

Logically speaking, the people in the Capitol who were most likely to rebel against the government would be the teenagers, and the people in their 20's. Younger, and we idealized it. Older, and we had others to protect. But our government is not unintelligent, and know us. But we were so completely brainwashed against the districts that we began to enjoy the Hunger Games because of their true purpose; to punish the districts.

As we grew older, our perspective grew wider. Capitol people do not grow up as quickly as people in the districts. And by the time we learned to empathize, it was too late. We had children of our own, children who we needed to protect. Our world was not perfect, and eventually someone would change it, but our lives were better if life stayed the way it was. We had been taught to be self-centered all our lives, and that didn't just go away.

Yes, we knew that killing children was evil and fundamentally wrong, but no one was willing to risk their own family for someone else's. How could I, so close to this evil, so dependent on it, stop it? I was just one, and no one could be trusted while the government watched our every move. Also, the districts were a powder keg of resentment, and I did not want to see the repercussions.

It was a saddening truth, but one that we all secretly accepted. Some love the Hunger Games, and they are the people who have never grown up. They resemble children in their sheep-like devotion. They are the ones who foolishly believe that the government will always be all-powerful. But other of us know better. The districts will not bow down forever. With this realization came the fear that there would come a day that someone would spark a rebellion, and there would be nothing that we could do.

So yes, I know that what I have accepted as normal has killed. I know that you may view us as evil, stupid, and weak. I can accept that. It may even be true. You say that we don't know what it is like to see our children killed on national television, but we understand the danger all too well. We have let it happen because nothing would be worse than our own children dying, a nightmare you have brought upon us. Selfish beings that we are, we were willing to sacrifice your children for the sake of our own.

A disgusting truth, but true never the less. I do not try to justify my actions, only explain my mindset.

Sincerely,  
Effie Trinket


End file.
